Viability Conditions for a Compartmentalized Protometabolic System: A Semi-Empirical Approach


Autoria(s): Piedrafita, Gabriel; Ruiz Mirazo, Pedro; Monnard, Pierre-Alain; Cornish-Bowden, Athel; Montero, Francisco
Data(s)

19/02/2014

19/02/2014

01/06/2012

Resumo

In this work we attempt to find out the extent to which realistic prebiotic compartments, such as fatty acid vesicles, would constrain the chemical network dynamics that could have sustained a minimal form of metabolism. We combine experimental and simulation results to establish the conditions under which a reaction network with a catalytically closed organization (more specifically, an (M, R)-system) would overcome the potential problem of self-suffocation that arises from the limited accessibility of nutrients to its internal reaction domain. The relationship between the permeability of the membrane, the lifetime of the key catalysts and their efficiency (reaction rate enhancement) turns out to be critical. In particular, we show how permeability values constrain the characteristic time scale of the bounded protometabolic processes. From this concrete and illustrative example we finally extend the discussion to a wider evolutionary context.

Identificador

PLoS One 7(6) : (2012) // e39480

1932-6203

http://hdl.handle.net/10810/11570

10.1371/journal.pone.0039480

Idioma(s)

eng

Publicador

Public Library Science

Relação

http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0039480

Direitos

© 2012 Piedrafita et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess

Palavras-Chave #metabolic closure #lipid vesicles #life #model #evolution #membranes #origins #cells #oligomerization #amphiphiles
Tipo

info:eu-repo/semantics/article